


Uniform Care and Maintenance

by AuntyA



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-20 12:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3650748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuntyA/pseuds/AuntyA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A gangster, a nationalist and a really bad plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jin - Mercy

His zekken had only two characters, Gin Ichimaru. Instead of a club name, he had a small stylized symbol of a kitsune embroidered on the back of his hakama. He moved at his opponent now like a white and indigo blur, fluidly zigzagging across the floor in his attack. Strike after strike, kote, kote, do, a shove and then his final blow, men. His wrists flicked. He had such an impossibly long reach. The strike was hard and perfect, echoing across the room. His student opponent dropped like a stone.

The watching students began to clap. As Gin stood, finally still, hakama still fluttering from his movements, he shrugged off his own men with one hand and held it under his right arm. He looked down mildly at his opponent on the floor, who was still struggling to get his own men off, one kote still on, with his shinei rolling away across the dojo floor. The man on the floor gasped, dragging air into his lungs, trying to catch his breath and undo the knots tangled in his men-himo that would release him from the confines of the men.

Gin turned and walked away holding his shinei in his left kote, wordlessly nodding, signaling to one of the older students to assist the man crumpled on the floor behind him. Two junior students ran over from the sidelines and as one helped the student to his feet, the other junior collected his equipment. The vanquished student limped with some assistance to the sidelines, his head hanging low. Another casualty of Gin’s speed and accuracy.

Shinei in hand, Gin kneeled, resting on his heels at the side of the training floor, holding his hakama out at the thigh with his left hand. He removed his kote and placed them on the floor, men on the kote, shinei down carefully to the left. He reached up and unwrapped his tenugui from around his head. Ritually, mechanically, he wiped his forehead with the cloth using both hands.

It was an unnecessary gesture. Rumour had it that he had never actually sweated, even during the intense summer heat of kendo camp. Even now, after a hard sparring in a hot room, his pale hair was dry. He shook his long bangs out of his eyes. He combed his fingers through it, parting it off to the side.

Gin folded the turquoise coloured tenugui neatly and placed it inside of his men. He flicked his tare forward and moved back to sit in an easy seiza. Impassively he watched the assembled blue figures in front of him meet, strike, move through and powerfully strike again. The room rang with kiai, the clash of bamboo on solid bodies, feet on the floor and the sound of men moving.

His dojo was in a mid-size showa style building, down a small residential street in Sakyo-ku. The dojo had an established reputation as a serious place for traditional kendo practice. Expectations were high for students he accepted to get a good ranking in the all-Japan tournaments. As a holdover from the past, only men were allowed to join as kendoka.

The club used the dojo for training, some matches and often for communal meals. The space was generous and old fashioned with shoji screens, siding doors and tatami flooring. Gin currently lived in small rooms just off his office in the dojo.

The dojo club practice room had a row of high windows near the ceiling for airflow and light, with sliding doors on either side, opening out to the garden on one side and to the hallway on the other. The tatami floors in the other rooms made the groups of students seem to instantly creep silently as they walked from the hardwood hallways, and from change room to practice room, accompanied by the sounds of sliding doors being opened and shut.

Gin watched smiling from the side of the dojo as the practice continued. He concentrated on following the action in the final sparring, squinting at the students, identifying them from the wear on their bogu, or just their attack style. He could see their zekken or their names on the back of their hakima only in bright bursts through the action when the students turned this way and that. The sharp sounds of kiais echoed off the hard surfaces in the practice room accompanied by the soft sounds of feet thumping on the floor.

That one, that was a good strike. Shinei crack together. Following with a swift shove for room and then, another. A feint to the left, no-one wants to raise a high stroke. No openings. In close, the combatants eye each other through their men. And now, a hard snap, a good strike, men. Feet moving quickly, forward and back. Closing the distance and getting a good tsuki strike. A student stumbled backwards. Next down the line, nice strong hidari kote. Opening finally for do. Strike, strike, shove, strike.

He enjoyed watching the way his students moved across the floor with ease. He watched their feet below the hakama, launching, landing, sliding. Stamping with each of the strikes. Blue hakama billowing, do gleaming, shinei clashing in tight movements. Heads held level, eyes focused, not giving away intentions through inadvertent movements. Hakama hiding tensed muscles, moving swiftly to make accurate hits.

He was the only person in the dojo not completely in blue. Gin always wore a white kendo-gi with his blue hakama. He was the only one in the club allowed to wear the pristine white kendo-gi. How he kept his kendo-gi completely white during training was something of a mystery to the club. He never had blue wear lines from his do-himo. If he could have gotten away with it, he thought he might have chosen to wear white hakama as well, but that particular fashion statement was considered much too feminine for his bushido driven dojo.

Gin looked over to one of the older students and nodded his head slightly. That was the signal for kirikaeshi to begin. His students lined up in order of rank and began the simple repetitive movements for the exercises. Gin smiled to himself with the memory of dropping his shinei from numb fingers after a long practice such as this one. The kirikaeshi drill was brutal in its simplicity, hard to complete accurately at the end of a long practice session, and so lengthy given the number of students in the room. Gin used the time to close his eyes and mull over his recent problems, listening absently to the cacophony of the room until it sounded like it was time for seiza retsu.

He looked up and down his line of students, greeted them and he thanked them for their hard work. He reminded them that the manly face of the warrior must be a false face. They must be presenting an encouraging face, an optimistic face, to replace an individual’s private weariness no matter what personal despair he might be plunged into.

As his most senior student first thanked him and then began his own speech to the group, Gin tuned him out, thinking to himself again that he couldn’t forget about his own upcoming error, that mistake still to come, any more than he himself could forget about his own very public face. A very out of character and unexpected misstep he thought sadly.

He rolled some possible solutions around in his mind, rejecting each one as impossible, ludicrous or simply ultimately unsuccessful. His attention came back to the group of students in front of him.

As it had been a typically long and hard practice, some students were looking a bit worse for wear. A small spattering of blood on the floor over there from someone’s foot, some bruising visible on hands, forearms and neck showing between the deep blue of the uniform. He saw a number of splintered shinei in the lineup. Sweaty and tired, students sat stock still and straight waiting to be dismissed.

He dismissed them easily, he certainly had more than enough of the club for today. He had begun to feel a slow thumping pain behind his eye returning. He was looking forward to the quiet serenity of his office rooms. The most junior students in the room began to retrieve the equipment of the more senior students, packing it up carefully and scuttling off, taking the bogu to the change rooms to be put away.

He had looked down for a moment at his equipment, when he looked up again, Mishima was suddenly there. Bowing low, forehead to the floor, Mishima kneeled in front of him, greeting him as if a student. He must have been training, he was sweaty and in gi hakama with his bogu beside him on the floor. Gin, inwardly groaning, sat impassively and steeled himself for what would surely come next. To delay the inevitable, Gin said “So. Let us continue our conversation in a moment. Come friend.”

As he got up fluidly from his seiza, a junior student immediately ran to get his equipment and follow the two of them out of the practice room. Turning to bow to the dojo, Gin waited just outside the door for Mishima to join him. He took his equipment back from the student with both hands, cutting off his protests. Smiling, Gin gently shooed the blonde junior student away. One less set of ears to hear what the ensuing conversation would be about would be a better choice.

Gin said “Let us change in my office, it is a bit more private there, no?” Mishima nodded and bowed low again, moving off to get his street clothes from the communal change room. Gin would have a few minutes alone in his office to put his thoughts in order for his response to the request that he knew was coming.

When Mishima called softly from the other side of the sliding door to the office, Gin was sitting cross legged on the tatami checking his kote for wear. He had shrugged off the shoulders of his kendo-gi, now pooled in white folds around his waist. Sitting bare-chested and only in his boxers, his hakama was already brushed off and folded up. The rest of his bogu was waiting neatly piled, ready to be tied up and put away when the kote inspection was done.

 Mishima slid open the office door and entered holding his clothing, still dressed for practice. Closing the door behind him, bowing low again, head to the tatami, Mishima only straightened when Gin addressed him. “Not so much of that my friend, I am your friend, your teammate and peer. Not your lord.” They faced each other as Gin waited for his friend to begin the conversation he had been dreading.

Mishima stood and started to untie his hakama, he dropped them, then reached down to pick them up. Mishima knelt in front of Gin, smoothing out the hakama flat on the floor to fold them. Powerful and hairy legs underneath the kendo-gi drew Gin’s attention. Gin sat back and watched him, his eyes like slits. “Hmm. Fundoshi still?” Gin said a little bit incredulously, smiling at his own joke to come. “A little old fashioned for such a modern specimen, no?”

Mishima, working on his folding, perfectly smoothing the numerous fabric pleats and knotting the obi-himo, answered “The finest cloak of invisibility for words is muscle, and the finest cloak of invisibility for the body is the uniform.” And then he launched right into his oft heard speech about fundoshi as the ultimate and perfect garment for athletic movements.

Gin interrupted him. He leaned his head to the side and stated, “So, to change the subject from the historical development of underpants, you know this I think, but you rather embarrassed me when you published that recent story. I am found to be rather recognizable to many in your works.” His smile did not entirely reach his eyes. He brushed his bangs to one side, looking directly at his friend.

Mishima placed his perfectly folded hakama off to the side and sat back. He untied and took off his kendo-gi, bare tanned torso the complete opposite of Gin’s thin pale build. Mishima then put on a white short-sleeved golf shirt over his head covering his muscular frame. He stood up and pulled on his pants over his powerful legs. Gin turned his head away with a small smile.

Kneeling again, now fully dressed, he bowed his head to Gin, and said, “My apologies my friend. Those stories needed to be published, and to be read. With beauty comes power through the destruction of that beauty. Your pale beauty is your power. Perhaps my publication using you as a character is assisting in the destruction.” He blinked at Gin.

“Che, I see. No apology from you today.” Gin turned towards a small table holding a small plate and an apple. “Would you like to join me in a snack?” Gin grasped the apple, short knife appearing from seemingly nowhere, he cut down through to the core, easily slicing the apple into pieces.

Mishima took an offered apple slice, reaching across with a well-muscled arm. He gazed down at the apple in his fingers, “Gin, my friend, what has been bothering me for some time is right here held in my fingers. How can the core of the apple be seen without the act of the cut?” He turned the apple slice again, “You will always need a sharp knife and to take a deep cut in order to see it.”

Gin waited for a moment before answering to see if any more was forthcoming on the subject of apples. When Mishima remained quiet, Gin spoke “So. You still keep death in mind from day to day, no?” Gin popped an apple slice into his mouth.

Mishima put his own slice back on the plate. He sat back, kneeling with his palms on his thighs, and answered curtly, “It is only the natural world I see, I see that death is an everyday self-evident matter. I have nurtured my body during this time, even my will and strength to fight is moving closer to inevitable destruction. My burnishing of imagination for death and danger has come to have the same significance as burnishing the sword.”

Mishima continued, “For you know that for me, the idea that time is recoverable means that the beautiful death that had eluded me has now become possible. I am now working very diligently to complete my novel ‘Decay of the Angel’. The end is very close.”

Gin sighed and answered, “Yes. Yes. You are of course correct. So, a heroic action.” He shrugged his kendo-gi off completely and began to fold it on the floor. “Please continue to tell me of your heroic plans while I finish getting dressed.”


	2. Gi - Righteousness

They sat together in Mishima’s grandmother’s cramped backroom. Her house backed on to a small quiet laneway and the storage room was at the rear of the house. The room itself was filled with moving dappled light from the sun coming through the trees in the backyard. Gin and Mishima sat haphazardly in the room, squeezed in around the piles of furniture, a lamp, boxes and bags.

Mishima sat a bit in the shadows, leaning back against a shipping barrel, cross-legged on the floor. He was casually dressed in chinos and short-sleeved polo shirt. Gin sat across from him, seated on the top of a large desk, his pale hair glowing in the light from the small window behind him. Gin was dressed in a three-piece suit in a subtle black watch plaid with a pale grey shirt and tie. His skinny sock-clad feet swung back and forth under the desk.

The men ate lunch of instant ramen from styrofoam cups. Small slurping noises accompanied the sound of chopsticks. Gin eyed Mishima’s noodles, “You gonna eat all that?” Mishima frowned at him, “I am cultivating my orchard. I can either cultivate my orchard or leave it for the weeds to run riot in. So. Yes, you piggish man, I am going to eat it all. Will you be eating all of yours? Maybe I should help you clean that up?” Gin drew back, eyes shut, laughing, “You can’t have any, no!” He moved his chopsticks to a defensive posture.

Mishima continued, frowning at his ramen, “Gin. Please consider this discussion seriously. Freedom is not as obvious as it may seem. I know you are uncomfortable with my direction here but I honestly believe that I need to try.” He moved back and straightened his legs out in front of him. “I know there are some truths in this world that cannot be seen unless one unbends their posture.”

With the hand holding his chopsticks, he patted a worn leather briefcase on the floor by his legs. “I have almost completed my last novel. I’m working with my editor on the finalization. That was the deadline I set myself to approach the new project. For the start of something new.” He put his ramen down on the floor beside him, placing his chopsticks neatly across the cup.

“Only four installments for your ‘The Sea of Fertility’ books?” Gin asked, poking at his ramen. He set his own noodles down as well, balancing the cup precariously on the edge of the desk, jamming the chopsticks into the ramen. He turned his head, tossing his long bangs to one side to look directly at Mishima seated below him in the half shadow of the crowded room. “You set the deadline? For your ‘Decay of the Angel’ or for the new and complex project which will involve all of us and be very hard to control once it is in motion?”

“I have come to sense within myself an accumulation of all kinds of things that cannot find adequate expression via objective artistic forms such as the novel.” Mishima’s voice came to a halt. He looked down at his hands in his lap. “I’m currently moving into the twilight genre between the night of confession and the daylight of criticism. The language of the body.”

“So, meaning what exactly?” Gin said, his smile wider but with a slight growing suspicion in his half-shut eyes.

Mishima stressed his answer to sound vaguely mocking “So, meaning, that Art can only give expression to what power I’ve been referring to through a medium. This act we are discussing will be my medium.” He tilted his head and stared intensely at Gin. “It is has been the future focus of my thoughts and has given me indescribable pleasure.”

Gin looked thoughtfully at him, “Expression. So, you don't say.” Gin slid off the desk and joined Mishima on the tatami floor. “And the dojo? What part does, or did, the dojo play in your ‘focus’?” Gin rearranged himself on the floor into a fluid seiza, sitting directly in front of Mishima. “This ultimate sensation you speak about, and the ‘future focus’. You looking for a specific signal or sign through your own actions to say what exactly and to whom?”

Mishima lifted his chin slightly, resembling a bulldog oh so slightly, the set to his jaw indicating his growing irritation with his luncheon companion. “It was natural that my rephrasing of this direction would take the form of kendo, along with this fist. The ultimate sensation that lies just beyond the senses lies at the end of the sword.”

Gin narrowed his eyes even more, “Ah, you mean to say that you don’t feel my shinei when it makes solid contact with your head?”

Mishima tensed his fists on his thighs. “The greater accuracy of your blow, say from a shinei, is felt by me as a type of counter blow. My own blow, my own strength creates a kind of hollow. Your successful blow means my body fits into that hollow in space and assumes a form precisely identical with it.”

Gin was not convinced. “So, I leave you space to win through my attacks? When have I ever done that?”

“No. You are misinterpreting me stubbornly on purpose. Success comes when both the timing and placing of the blow are just right. Victory is created when what is beyond the tip of the sword has taken shape already in the hollow in space that I marked out and created through my own power.”

Gin blew out his cheeks and then made a raspberry sound as he exhaled slowly. “Yeah, no matter, not really getting it my friend.”

“My beautiful transformation of language means the fencing sword is at the opposite pole of verbal language.” Mishima had the good graces to look even a small measure sheepish at his own overblown and pompous words. “In other words, ideas do not fight back, I am not suggesting that in any way. One will never succeed in getting at the essence of a reality that can return one’s gaze. It is the essence of action and power that I refer to as ‘the opponent’. My form preserves a constant precision and beauty…”

Gin interrupted with a soft snort, “Che, your spindly form is like an ume boshi, preserved like a pickled plum. You know that I did not ask how you got to this point but why we are here at this place.”

Mishima continued on as if there had been no interruption, “The continuous radiation of my strength creates its own shape, like a continuous jet of water will maintain the shape of the fountain.”

Gin looked at him impassively. Silent. Waiting for the rest of the plan to rise from wherever it was submerged in the fountain.

Mishima moved, leaning back and placing his hands behind him on the tatami. His shirt pulled tight across his muscular chest, his thick arms flexing. “The dojo and tatenokai are something that connects me to our shared history and culture. I place my reliance on the two, on others, and that reliance is mutual.”

 “Mutual, you hope.” Gin said softly, his long bangs falling back in front of his eye. “Aren’t you about to ask me for a very large favour, or rather, to ask me to participate in a very serious action that will change our lives forever through my involvement in it? Are you asking it of all of us? Would you not reconsider your future request to us?”

“I will overlook your current comments as I don't believe that you truly feel so oppositional to the plan for the near future.” Mishima looked down again at his hands. “It is a simple enough plan. It is easy enough for six trained men in that place with honour and righteousness on their side to execute the plan. I will have my speech on the balcony, there will be television coverage. The troops stationed at that location will be moved at the hearing of my words and the government will fall. The remainder of our numbers will act to continue the plan outside of the location.”

“But in a way, to my ears, you are asking for us to prepare to accompany you to the other side of death, your suicide and our potential deaths or imprisonment for treason.” Gin said in the same soft tone, his Kansai dialect a bit stronger now. “Mishima, if the worst outcome occurs you will get a state funeral worthy of a poet, playwright and author, you know. So, what will the rest of us get as our payment in history?”

The light had changed during the afternoon since they had arrived for their furtive lunch. The dappled light and shadows of the storeroom had become darker and longer. The piles of dusty boxes and furniture seemed to have risen higher in the dim light. Discrete objects becoming indistinct shapes in the darkened small room.

“On earth man wears himself out in intellectual adventures. Gin, my friend you are correct, our action represents a bridge and once we cross this bridge there will be no means of return. But it is not only my personal quest. We are all united in seeking death and glory.”

Mishima looked at Gin, seeing only a dark silhouetted figure with a blurred pale face and light hair now in the fading light. “Fear is necessary for evolution. Are we not united Gin? Do we not share the same swift pulse with all the tatenokai?”

Gin sat, silent for a moment longer in the gloom. Then he effortlessly and fluidly stood from his formal seated position on the floor. He reached into his vest pocket and checked the luminous face of his wristwatch. Satisfied with the time, he replaced the watch in his pocket, and said “As you are well aware, I hate sad stories my friend.”

He brushed off the front of his pants with both hands and then bent to take his ramen cup and chopsticks from the desktop, looking back towards Mishima, still seated on the floor.

“So yes, Mishima, we are united. Of course please tell me about your overthrowing the constitution speech another day but also please consider me at this point to be united with your complex and potentially fatal plan.”

“I will be leaving now. I want to still return to my office to finish some work that is waiting for me to be completed. Please come and see me tomorrow there, at the dojo, if you have the time. You and I, we need to speak seriously about the logistics for the upcoming shared and fated endeavour to increase our chances of success.”

Gin bowed slightly to Mishima still seated on the floor, “Thank you for the lunch and please give my regards to your lovely grandmother on this fall day.” He then turned on his heel and left the room, still holding his ramen cup and chopsticks in one pale long fingered hand.

Gin sounded somehow saddened, saying over his shoulder as he went down the hall, “I can certainly see myself out today, my friend. Good day.”


	3. Rei - Etiquette

Gin stood in the small washroom down the hall from his office in the dojo. He leaned over the sink, shirtless, wearing a light blue knitted haramaki over his gun still holstered snugly in the back of the waistband of his suit trousers. He was wearing tabi with his geta clogs.

His pale and thin but tightly muscled body was bending low over the sink, dipper in hand, running water over his head. A stream of bloody water poured out of his mouth and into the sink. His bangs were soaked and stuck to his forehead. His eyes were closed.

Pausing the water flow, he gently prodded his teeth on that side with his other hand. He poked something that ached, a slash of pain arching up his jaw. One eye opened and he looked in the mirror at the side of his face.

Only a bruise on his pale cheekbone and over his jawline. No real damage to his teeth that he could find but something was loose. A slightly swollen knee and some knuckle bruising. All in all, being done by dawn with so few injuries was a small success these days at work. Today’s job would be a little more difficult he thought.

Tossing the dipper back into the wooden bucket by his feet, he straightened up, rolled his neck and stared in the mirror for a moment. His eye, the white now showing starkly red, still throbbed. That pain behind his eye was getting worse. It seemed.

He smiled grimly in the mirror at himself. When animals smile it does not mean they are happy, he thought. He had looked better.

His hair was plastered to his head and over his eye. His ribs did have some old bruising from the week before. The scar on his right bicep that looked like a burn was raised and angry today on his pale skin. The small tattoo on his left side was faded but still visible. A stylized fox face.

Wiping his face with a small towel from the washroom, geta clacking, he walked back down the hall.

Kicking off his geta outside, he slid the door to his office open. He tossed the damp towel onto the small pile made of his bloody shirt, vest and tie currently by the doorframe. Gin slid the door closed again and moved over to his low desk. 

As he kneeled down to begin his work, he pulled slightly at the fabric of his trousers just above the knee with both hands to avoid ruining his sharp pleats. He sat gingerly on his office floor on the tatami in his tabi socks, taking care to kneel on the pillow in front of the desk to protect his knee.

He took a moment and gazed over at the shrine wall of his office.

He had originally put his family ihai name tablets next to the shrine, but there were no photos of his parents on display. His calligraphy skills certainly had worsened since he had completed those tablets. It had been some time since he had pursued such academic work. Now Gin spent much more of his time in the realm of physicality.

He kept the family shrine mostly empty now to allow for reflection. His butsudan shelf had only a lovely shimenawa rope from Fushimi Inari shrine, a Maten Kyoumon sutra that had come down through his father’s family and a small glittering painting of a pale Buddha smiling widely with his eyes closed.

Oh, and there on the shelf sat one single persimmon. He had always expected the gods would have a good sense of humour.

He was looking at the dark aged armour on a stand that had belonged to his paternal Ichimaru ancestors, from before the Tokugawa period. His ancestors must have been tiny people as the armour was for a man quite a bit shorter than he was. The helmet had an attached bristly moustache to the faceplate that Gin had always found to be hilarious in its incongruity.

His gaze moved to the swords on the gleaming lacquered and intricately carved katana kake stands arranged along the same wall.

His own personal daisho sword pair, with an additional tanto, was stored on one stand. A long nodachi from his mother’s Shinso family on another.

Then his iaito stand to the left of those. He enjoyed his frequent iaido practice. Mishima often joined him as they ran through the patterns or had a tameshigiri cutting contest. He also enjoyed the thought that the tangs hidden in the hilt noted the number and type of cuts that each blade was capable of.

Soft low lighting from the ceiling gave the display a museum feeling. Certainly the weapons themselves warranted the respectful treatment.

His navy shin gunto was reverentially placed upright on its own tachi style stand, alone on a small dark pedestal incised with the Ichimaru fox faces. This weapon was not gleaming. The dark worn saya looked battered and worse for wear. The most utilitarian and murderous of all the weapons on display was this one.

He had received the sword from Admiral Ugaki with his commission, although the blade on his navy sword was an ancestral one. The matte black weapon was the only sword on display lacking Gin’s personal light blue accents in the saya, light blue tsuka ito and tassels and etched kitsune decorations.

Even the ancient long Shinso nodachi had been relacquered at some point in the recent past with the Ichimaru motifs.

All of the weapons, including his navy sword, did have the same family tsuba of two semi-circles, making a thin open oval in the shape of an ‘s.’ Gin had seen that motif so often it just seemed like the only choice in the world to him.

He used them all regularly, with the exception of the shin gunto. That was a weapon he would not wield again he though wryly. Even the nodachi had made it into his weekly training schedule.

He straightened up and pushed down the back of his haramaki. At work, under his cleverly tailored suit jacket, holstered in the back of his waistband, he wore a gun at all times.

He removed his Sig Sauer holster and set it down to the side. He supposed the gun was the modern equivalent of wearing his wakizashi inside the palace. But unlike that sword, he had no real need of the weapon in his own home.

He felt burdened by more than just the weight of the weaponry in the room. His family was just a memory to him at this point. He couldn’t remember the real sound of his mother’s voice.

He could however remember the sound and feeling of the blows his father dealt him when he made a mistake: in kendo, in iaido, in calligraphy, in poetry, in recitation, in sitting or in standing. Gin felt a shudder pass over him, as if someone was walking on his grave somewhere.

His bespoke tailored suit jacket was hanging behind the desk. His tatenokai uniform, gloves, hat, belt, were already laid out on the chaise pushed against the far office wall. His boots were waiting by the door on a mat. His uniform had been brushed and folded by a junior dojo student. He always polished his buttons, belt buckle and boots himself.

His attention moved to the desk in front of him. He was looking down at maps of Tokyo, Ichigaya, and the Japan Self-Defense Ministry compound. He leafed through photos of parking lots. Photos of a balcony and second floor windows, and photos of an office with a large desk and heavy leather chairs.

He had lists of military contact names in his tidy handwriting. Typewritten notes from observational work of the comings and goings of the compound. The business card of a TV journalist from NNN. A military ID card with his own pale face but not his name. Car keys.

Gin got a small red book from under the desk and opened it to the page with the ribbon bookmark. These were his own personal notes for the event. A schedule for the guard duty roster on the front gate. The touchpad combination code to the second floor office. Notes for the calligraphy for the banners to accompany the upcoming speech. Some phrases for the speech itself.

Just as he had turned his head to look over to the rifle crates stacked in front of the windows to the garden, he heard the polite sounds of a junior student on the other side of his office door give a small cough. He heard a low voice through the door, “Pardon me for the interruption Sensei Ichimaru? Excuse me?”

Gin looked over at the door and said “Please. So, do come in please.” The door slid open, a blond student, wearing a dark gakuran dojo uniform, still kneeling, slid a tray into the room. “Breakfast and tea, Sensei Ichimaru.” The student said softly looking down, face mostly hidden by his long bangs.

The student brought the tray over to the desk and kneeled as Gin cleared some papers to the side. As he made some room on the desktop, he thought to himself, what was this student’s name again? Izuru Kira? Yes. Izuru.

Izuru. Willowy and tall, looked like a pushover but with deep power and stamina in sparring. He was a handsome lad under those silly bangs. Don’t really have the time this time around though. Che, no matter.

Gin, engrossed in his thoughts, moving his gun away under the desk, juggling papers, the food and tea things, absently thanked the general direction of the student who disappeared silently, sliding the door shut behind him.

Gin frowned at his breakfast tray. Always later. Always postponed. Right now he needed to arrange a meeting with Mishima. So he would have to call Hiraoka-hime.

Gin inhaled deeply through his nose. He looked into his tea cup, at the small breakfast on the tray of rice, pickles and tamagoyaki and then back at his book.

He really wanted just a can of coffee and a piece of toast or a tuna onigiri from the FamilyMart. Ah well, his wants could be satisfied later in the day at that diner he liked. He could probably get his driver to stop there on the way to his next appointment later in the morning.

Like it or not, he would need speak to Mishima’s grandmother, Hiraoka Natsuko. That was a task he was not looking forward to. It was no longer too early, so he couldn’t put it off.

He moved over to a higher desk with a western chair on the other side of the gun crates. On that desk sat a black rotary dial telephone and a rolodex. He flipped through the cards until he found the correct one. He sat on the chair for a moment to compose his thoughts and then picked up the receiver. He dialed the number with a pale index finger.

On the other side of the office door, Izuru Kira, was kneeling quietly in the hall outside the office, with the pile of bloody clothes. Head bowed, waiting, Kira heard the following one-sided exchange through the office door.

He could hear Gin’s Kyoto-ben accent becoming more and more pronounced as the telephone call proceeded through the winding strictures of politeness.

“Good morning. Yes. This is Ichimaru Gin.”

“Is Hiraoka Natsuko there please? May I speak to Ms. Hiraoka please?”

“I'm so sorry, Please forgive me. I’m happy to wait.”

“Good morning, I’m terribly sorry to trouble you with such a silly question, but. Mmm. Yes.”

“This is Ichimaru Gin. I am calling with an update regarding your grandson, Hiraoka Kimitake.”

“Ichimaru is my family name. Yes. You are correct, my mother’s family are Shinso from Kyoto. You may be more familiar with my father’s family? Ichimaru. Yes. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry that I haven’t contacted you in such a long time. Yes. Hiraoka-san is often with me here at the dojo. Yes he is in good health. I see him quite often.”

“Yes. Hmm.”

“So, yes. I just wanted to let you know that he is finalizing his last novel. His series, or set of novels will be complete. Yes. He may not have spoken of this matter with you yet.

“So. It may end badly. The intention is to be glorious for Japan. Yes. He has. Yes. He has lived his life for this moment. Just so.”

“I need to confirm with him some arrangements today. Yes. Just so. Our appointment is for eleven tomorrow.”

“I’m sure your tutelage has played a large part. Yes. I truly do.”

“Thank you for your time. So sorry for disturbing you.”

“Could Hiraoka-san please confirm with me before the appointment time? Yes. Thank you. In person would be the best.”

“I was very sorry to hear about that when it occurred. I was concerned when he didn't win the third time as well. I felt it was very presumptuous and short sighted of the Nobel committee. Yes. I agree. Yes. It was a shame for all Japan.”

“I’m honored that I was able to be of assistance during this time. May you be in a good mood. Thank you for speaking with me today Ms. Hiraoka.”

“Shitsurei shimasu.” Gin paused.

“Shitsurei itashimasu.” Gin repeated into the receiver, listening to the dial tone, and then he hung up the phone.

He leaned forward and put his forehead on flat the desk in front of him. He needed a drink. Mishima owed him that much at this point for having to speak with his very formidable grandmother.

Kira took the silence in the office as an opportunity to return to the dojo workroom with the bloody laundry.

Gin’s eyes narrowed and he lifted his head sharply as he heard a small soft sound from the hall beyond the office door. “What are you playing at Izuru?” he thought, his hands clenching slightly on his thighs.


	4. Shin - Trust

He was drinking a nice canned coffee from the kiosk when he saw her walking up to meet him at Kagurazaka station. She was impossible to miss and certainly drew the attention of everyone on the tiny platform. He grinned to himself. Hide it in plain sight was an idea he had always supported.

Her long blonde hair was in a messy updo improbably held in place by large sunglasses. She had on a short white corseted coat with leather laces up the sides and a furry hood, coat worn open of course, to show off her white deep v-necked blouse. She had on a purple velour miniskirt, white lace tights and golden shoes.

Completely incongruously, she was carrying a pink Hello Kitty school bag in one hand that if you looked at it closely, seemed much heavier than it should. She had a glittery clutch purse in her other hand, which she waved happily at him, her chunky charm bracelet charms jangling. He tossed his empty can into the garbage and turned to meet her.

Matsumoto Rangiku really was something else. Gin gave her a wide smile, bowed and then leaned in for a hug, mostly of boobs and fun fur, as he gently took the pink bag from her hand. “I love the uniform Gin-san!” She squealed and whacked him on the shoulder. Then she laughed and said “I never thought I’d see you in a train station, I thought that was only my job to pick up and deliver for you on the trains.”

“I need and appreciate what you are delivering today Miss Rangiku. And thank you for delivering it to me on such short notice.” Gin handed her an envelope. She moved closer to take it and then reached up to brush his bangs off his forehead with her other hand. He leaned down to her and she kissed his forehead with warm lips. “Am I seeing you later and getting lucky, Gin?” she asked as she crunched the envelope into her clutch purse with much clattering of jewelry.

Gin nodded, “I think we still have some work to do much later, Miss Rangiku. But I will need all my luck today.” He grimaced slightly, “May I call you after it is finalized? I do have some appointments in the evening that you may be able to help me with due to your personally unique skills and talents.”

She giggled at his politeness. “Call that payphone I was using yesterday. I’ll be there later.” She brushed his arm with her fingers, “Say it again Gin. Use that polite talk again. It makes me feel like a princess and you are my prince.”

“I’m certainly your prince charming today, Miss Rangiku, so go make your meetings, now please.” He slapped her ass as she walked away. “And don't watch too much TV today please!” he called. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, ignoring him, and sashayed off down the train platform. Gin watched her walk away as the train came in and then the doors closed behind her.

++++++

Gin walked into the elevator of 71 Yaraicho, Shinjuku-ku, holding Mishima’s briefcase in one hand and the very heavy pink Hello Kitty school bag in the other. He switched both bags to one hand and reached into his pants pocket to check his wristwatch. He still had a few minutes before his appointment with the editor. These early appointments weren’t his usual routine. Mishima was making him work hard for this.

The elderly elevator operator asked him politely for his destination floor number. Gin smiled slightly, there were only five stories in this ancient publishing house building. Gin answered “Editorial, delivering for Mishima.” The fragile looking operator immediately snapped into a straightened posture and gave Gin a small salute, fingers to his cap, before he turned back to the elevator panel and closed the interior gate.

The gleaming brass elevator doors closed with a thud and the elevator began its creaky ascent. Gin still had some concerns with the plan. As one of his old sempai had always repeated during basic training, ‘How do you know that you have completed your task? How will you know that you have been successful?’ Gin found himself wondering a bit more than he liked about the end of the plan.

The parts of the schedule that he was in charge of would certainly work smoothly. The handful of Tatenokai that Mishima had chosen were another story indeed. None of them were dojo members. Mishima had recruited, or attracted spontaneously like a moths to a flame, students who shared his intensely nationalistic politics and now were completely under his spell.

Gin had initially thought the students were a liability, much too keen to complete their mission with a finality he hadn't seen in least 25 years. Also they seemed so very young and idealistic. They had no context for the full action that they were setting in motion in just a few short hours. He still felt their core was lacking resolve. His opinion of them had not changed in the time they had been working on the plan.

He would need to be back to the pickup point with the car soon for them. He looked at his pale reflection in the brassy elevator mirror as the floors clicked by. The Tatenokai uniform made him look, he wasn’t sure, maybe look younger? Although no stranger to uniforms of all kinds, Gin felt a bit like he was playing soldier with this outfit on.

The elevator dinged loudly and the elevator operator bowed low so Gin could see the part in his thinning hair and said softly, “Fifth floor - Shinchosha Publishing Company Editorial Department.” The operator opened the interior gate and the heavy elevator doors slid open. He turned towards Gin, gloved hand outstretched, “Your floor sir? Thank you and goodbye.”

Gin nodded his assent and bowed slightly to the elevator operator, without removing his hat, then straightened up and left the elevator. With his highly polished boots clicking on the linoleum floor, Gin moved down the office hall to deliver the final volume of Mishima’s last manuscript.

++++++

Kira was in the dojo workroom and had the television on with the volume low. It wasn’t really any particular show that he watched while he worked, just that he was often bored by the radio. His shirt and jacket were off and he was working just in his undershirt with an apron covering his waist and pants.

He was scrubbing laundry on a washboard. It was something he normally found mesmerizingly meditative but today he was having problems finding his mental place and it had become dull work.

The students did all of the menial tasks in the dojo, and acted as Ichimaru’s servants for certain tasks like cooking and laundry. Kira slept at the dojo and trained, did chores and went to school most days. His servile relationship with the dojo didn’t bother Kira at all. The labour he viewed as part of his training, it made him harder to lug heavy water buckets and instilled the peace of formal training when he worked scrubbing a floor or preparing food.

Kira felt he got more out of the relationship than perhaps Ichimaru knew was even being given. He was happy to do this work, regardless of Ichimaru maybe not knowing his name. Kira had come to know his most private and complex secrets, personal and professional, as ‘the laundry never lies’ he told himself with a small inward smile.

Suddenly he found his hands stopping in the sudsy water as his attention was drawn back to the small black and white image of Ichimaru’s colleague on the television. Mishima, in the familiar Tatenokai uniform, was standing on a balcony and the television screen showed a crowd of soldiers all craning their necks to look up at him. There were large banners hanging down from the balcony, but the wind was curling them and Kira was not able to read them in their entirety. Something about commercialism and a return to Japanese spirit maybe.

_‘This is NHK reporting from the Japan Self Defence Force – Ichigaya base. There is an ongoing coup attempt which started this morning…”_

Kira’s breath stopped for a moment. Was Ichimaru there with him? Kira had ironed and brushed out his Tatenokai uniform for today. Ichimaru had uncharacteristically worn it when he left this morning. And he had left so early in the day for business.

Kira realized his hands were in cold water as the television continued with the report, _“Apparently a small group has General Matsuda held hostage in his office…”_

The audio was drowned out by the sound of helicopters overhead. The soldiers shown on screen standing around outside the building didn’t seem very sympathetic. They seemed to be shouting, even heckling Mishima as he attempted to make a speech from the balcony.

Mishima was somehow smaller than in real life on the television. Kira had sparred occasionally with him at the dojo, and had found his sheer strength and force able to best even Kira’s most successful attacks. In the dojo he had been a formidable opponent really only bested by Ichimaru.

But Mishima looked oddly anxious and pathetic on the television, his forehead sweaty below his hachimaki. His movements halting, gloved hand in supplication not in a posture of power. His short speech seemed to lack conviction, his words were hard to follow and drowned out by the bad quality of the sound, the crowd and the helicopter noise.

After a few short minutes, he seemed to give up the attempt at the speech and returned inside. The news coverage switched back to the studio after Mishima had climbed into the office from the balcony. His speech had done nothing but stirred up the crowd to hurl abuse at him.

The talking heads in the television studio concentrated on talking about the shock value of the incident and Mishima’s writings and plays. Someone called him a ‘chocolate soldier’ and wondered why he had been allowed to form a play army. The network didn’t seem to have much more information about the reasons behind the coup.

Kira moved the washbasin back over to the sink, careful of not spilling on the floor, and began to wring out the wet laundry. Methodically twisting and untwisting, then snapping the garment to remove the rest of the water, Kira found his mind wandering back to the last time he had seen Mishima at the dojo with Ichimaru.

They had been having a serious conversation after practice, faces humourless, almost huddled together in Ichimaru’s office. Kira had overheard Mishima say, “I will shout, and when I shout I feel some fire and I feel some raw material of life.” Ichimaru had smiled his smile most lacking in laughter and replied drily, “We will all feel the fire from this one but the raw material of life I will leave entirely with you.”

Kira kept the television in view as he worked, vainly hoping for even a small glimpse of a pale haired man in a Tatenokai uniform anytime the news switched back to live footage of the scene.

+++++

The shadows were long by the time Gin returned to the dojo that evening. He had made sure to get out of the way before the police and the military had come to clean everything up.

He had been surprised at how poorly prepared the students were for the final part of the plan. They had not thought out how their action would assist the restoration of the Japanese spirit if the JDF was not moved by their actions. Morita had failed spectacularly after Mishima had taken his own damning strokes with the swords from the Hello Kitty bag.

Gin chuckled, that simple pink distraction had pissed Mishima off almost more than any failure, he guessed wryly. That had made him smile. Thank god for Miss Rangiku, little did she know what humour she had brought to the incident.

Regardless, the gory attempt by Morita had been paused after the third try hacking at Mishima’s neck so Chibi had stepped up and acted as kaishakunin for both Mishima and Morita. Surprisingly Morita had certainly been more successful with his own gut wounds and of course Mishima had performed a magnificent sepukku. Furu and Ogawa had both been entirely useless. Gin had almost had to take matters into his own hands, which would have compromised his participation but he guessed that was why he had been invited after all.

He was there as the trusted cleanup man and that he had surely done for his old friend. Only the Tatenokai had suffered fatalities. No injury had come to the General or his staff. A broken window and some mess in the office was all. Chibi, Furu and Ogawa would get some short jail time, Mishima would get his state funeral, and everyone would forget poor hapless Morita if they ever knew of him in the first place.

Bootless, Gin set his hat, sword, ever present Sig Sauer and car keys down on the now clean desktop. Then he removed his bloody gloves and began unbuttoning his jacket, dropping the dirty clothing to the floor and shoving it into a pile with his foot. He tossed his belt on the back of the western style chair. He methodically stripped the rest of the uniform off himself and then started a little, startled by the quiet cough at the door.

“What do you want?” he growled at the door, irritated by the interruption. “Pardon me, Ichimaru-san, do you require assistance with your uniform?” Kira asked from the other side of the door. Gin huffed, “Che, Izuru, take the dammed clothes and go. I have work to do.”

Kira slid the door open and keeping his head low, moved towards the pile of clothing, he flicked his eyes up only the once. Gin caught him looking and turned back, completely naked, stepping closer, leaning in lower and hissed at him, “Do you like me in or out of my clothing little boy? You are such a shitty voyeur Izuru.”

Kira, blushed deeply, scooping up the clothing and retreating backwards quickly, hiding behind his bangs, “So sorry Sensei, please ignore me, I was only concerned after the events of today. I was concerned for your safety. I apologize.” Then he was back in the relative safety of the hall bowing low, eyes down for sure this time.

Gin took a step towards him, with pale hands on his bony hips, eyes narrowed and thinking. “Yes, we may speak about that later but as you can plainly see, I will need a few moments to get dressed so I am not at a disadvantage. Alone please. Izuru, get me something to drink and return then.” He slid the door shut firmly on Kira.

Kira kept his forehead down on the cool hall floor for a moment to get his breath back and then fled to the workroom clutching the laundry to his chest. Apparently Ichimaru did know his name quite well after all.


	5. Makoto – Loyalty

 “Izuru.” Kira’s head touched the hall floor at the sound of Gin’s voice addressing him tersely. Kira knelt nervously until he heard the huffy sound of Gin so close to the door. “Izuru come in please and stop the annoying kowtowing. I find it embarrassing.” Kira blushed but straightened and moved fully into Gin’s office closing the sliding door quietly after him.

Gin was wearing dark pants, a pale shirt and suspenders. Kira inwardly shook his head at Gin’s vanity. Even at home, even in the middle of afternnoon, he still dressed with some thought. Gin’s feet were bare, zori sitting beside him as he sat on the floor. He had a thin red book in front of him.

Kira kneeled again to Gin’s right. He lowered his head again, hiding behind his bangs. “Che, you need to keep your head up Kira.” Gin said. “Raise your head miserable man, look at me.” Gin was looking straight at him, smiling widely, his reading glasses on, with one hand on the red book.

“We’ll get along just fine I think. You know, I'm a snake. Cold of flesh and devoid of heart. My tongue flicks back and forth, ever in search of new prey, and if I like what I find, I swallow 'em whole." Gin was frightening him.

“Are you a cop Kira? Are you a spy for another family perhaps? Can you tell me what is going on here with all the listening and spying?” Gin sounded slightly amused.

Kira remained very still, palms on his thighs sweating trembling slightly, not entirely daring to breathe. From the corner of his eye he caught the glint of a very sharp tanto in Gin’s other hand now pointed at his throat. “What exactly are you doing here in my dojo, washing my underclothes and spying on my actions?”

Kira stuttered, hands still on his thighs, eyelids fluttering and his Adams apple bobbing behind his gakuran jacket collar. “Ichimaru-san, sir. I’m only a student. I am your student. I train here. I work here. I live here. I am nothing.” He looked back at Gin, eyes showing a bit more white than normal. He breathed in slowly through his nose, trying to remain calm.

The tanto disappeared, and Gin, leaning forward, grabbed Kira’s throat with a iron hand, squeezing. Kira remained still, trying not to recoil or claw at the hand cutting off his air. Gin cocked his head at Kira and said lightly, “I have a need for something or someone. But I need to know that they can be trusted. A trusted source.”

Gin ran his finger languidly around Kira’s collar, pulling a dark string up and finding the small stone pendant he wore around his neck. Gin tugged at it breaking the string. Releasing Kira’s throat, he caught the black Buddha in his other hand, fingers smoothing over the carved figure.

“To quote a close friend, “Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.” Are you ready to offer me your poetry Kira?” he hissed. Gin took one of Kira’s cold hands from his lap and turning it over, he pressed the Buddha into his palm again and curled his fingers into a fist over the cool stone.

“What do you need from me?” Kira asked voice barely above a whisper, willing himself to sit and be present, not anxious, not nervous. He gripped the Buddha in his hand, feeling the raised carved surface in his palm, stroking the beaded edge of the stone unconsciously. He cleared his throat and said, “Can I serve you in some way? Ichimaru-san? Is there something I can do?”

“I need no spies. I have many irons in the fire so to speak,” Gin continued. Settling back on the floor apart from Kira, Gin knelt once more. “As you know I was quite busy today. I believe that you already have dealt with the laundry.” He smiled. “We live in an age in which there is no heroic death and yet we saw it. In front of us on the television there it was. I will now need to endure a state funeral, the editorials, the eulogies, grieving mothers and speeches amongst other things.”

Kira took advantage of the distance between Gin and himself to force down his fear. He kept his face towards Gin and his head up. Suddenly brave, Kira tilted his chin a little and remarked, “Ichimaru-san, I do have something to confess. Your colleague Mishima…” He stuttered a bit, “I mean Hiraoka,had approached me to assist him in his endeavours today but I always declined.”

Gin looked in askance at him, with heavy lidded eyes but still smiling his odd grin. “Why did you not join his movement at the first invitation? Did his bushido politics not appeal to you?”

Kira continued softly, “I couldn’t allow him to compromise the dojo through my involvement with him. My first allegiance is of course to you. I could not allow him to threaten you and your important work.”

Gin laughed, “I need no assistant or companion. My important work is as you can plainly see from your vantage point of the laundry room, skirts the line of legality often straddling it.” Gin leered at Kira with that remark.

“My important work is with powerful men with vast appetites and a need for administrating complex issues. They appreciate my approach.”

Gin leaned forward and knocked the little red book with his knuckle once. “This is my client list, I need to keep track as insurance against the inevitable. Kira, I don’t need to fully trust you for this task but I will share with you where this is stored.”

He gracefully rose from the floor and walked over to the wall of the office by the door. Hanging on the wall was a framed university diploma. He lifted the frame and flipped it. He set the red book in the back of the frame and replaced it.

“I need you to continue as you were but leave the spying and sneaking out. If I find that you have continued on in the same vein from today, you will force my hand. And you will regret it.”

Kira was still confused and his close proximity to Gin was making him nervous. He would have bruises on his throat he was pretty sure of that. He cleared his throat quietly but didn’t speak as he had forgotten what he was going to say.

Gin took advantage of his silence. “Let me make this simpler, I need a sort of safe deposit box. Kira, you are it. You will see, you will listen and you will remember. You are loyal to me and yet uninvolved. We will be colleagues here and enjoy each other’s company. Train hard and eat well, yes?”

Gin turned from the door and stared right at Kira, his smile growing, eyes squinting. “I have an appointment in 40 minutes, can you be ready? You do not need to change clothes.” He leered again, “The school uniform may work to my advantage perhaps.”

Gin turned back to his western-style desk. He began to rummage in the drawers, “I will get you a weapon.” He stacked two boxes of bullets on the desktop and turned back to the drawer.

Kira, nodded in confused agreement at Gin’s back, finally lowering his head and closing his eyes behind his bangs. Kira said with what he hoped was commitment in his shaky voice, “I am already ready Sir. Please advise me on what I will need to do to assist you in your tasks.” Gin turned again to him with a gleam in his eye.

++++++

Kira and a woman he had been introduced to as Matsumoto sat in the backseat of a car with a driver. She was making him fairly nervous, she had cooed over his uniform. Sitting too close to him, stroking his arm and patting his chest. Running her fingers over the row of gleaming buttons and teasing him mercilessly. She toyed with his second jacket button, grinning at him and filling all the space in the mostly one-sided conversation with remarks about his lack of a girlfriend.

She held his arm tightly against her ample chest, and he felt a bit breathless, but not from arousal but from anxiety that he was failing some examination that Ichimaru was holding on his behalf. A holster dug into his back, an unfamiliar weight in his new role under his uniform jacket.

Gin had instructed them to meet him at a location downtown, the driver knew where they were to be and when. They were not to speak but just to accompany him to a meeting. Matsumoto didn't seem to care, she was dressed casually, exuding sex in a low cut blouse, miniskirt and high shiny boots.

Oddly, she was carrying two school bags, blue with pink straps, he thought the bags had clanked when she set it on the floor of the car. The driver of the car hadn’t turned around or greeted them when they first got into the car and had said nothing at all to them during the drive.

Before they had departed, Gin had said to them rather unsettlingly, “A friend once told me that true beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs and finally destroys.” And stared right at him. He had hidden behind his bangs and lowered his eyes.

He looked up when Matsumoto had said somewhat wistfully, “I had always heard that beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.” And then she had looked so longingly at Gin, Kira thought the air itself might catch fire.

Kira remained silent, unsure of whether this was what passed as normal conversation between them. Gin bowed slightly to them both, a wide grin with eyes squinting, and left them to make their own way to the appointment.

Kira and Matsumoto were delivered to a non-descript office building across from the Imperial Palace. The driver gave her a card with a phone number and told her to call him when they were done. Kira looked around but saw no phone booths, no kiosks. The car had driven away and Matsumoto had put the card away somewhere, before he could ask how they would be able to make to make that call.

Matsumoto shouldered the school bags, they definitely were not filled with school materials. She crossed the street towards Meiji Seimei Kan.

A number of men in dark glasses and overcoats stood around the front entrance of the building and turned to check her out as they walked by. Ignoring them, she pushed the heavy entrance door open and her heels clicked purposefully as she began to cross the splendid lobby towards the elevators. He hurried to catch up to her across the gleaming slick floor.

++++++

 Matsumoto was sitting smoking a cigarette, sprawled on a small couch off to the side of the luxurious reception area with one of the school bags. Kira sat stiffly on a modernistic and very uncomfortable waiting room chair, he held the other heavy school bag nervously in his hands. Gin sat on an office chair on wheels facing an emaciated seated man in a pale cream shirt and dark arm protectors like a clerk. The man was involuntarily jerking, waggling his head back and forth as he sat at the polished reception desk.

Gin spun his chair back and forth like a child. The man’s dark shaggy hair shook as he involuntarily twitched and nodded. He was flanked by thugs in dark suits standing behind the desk, including some of the overcoats from outside the building. They ignored Matsumoto and Kira, focusing on Gin.

Gin spoke, “So it begins I guess. I have them. What do you have for me?” He smiled widely with his eyes squinting at the man.

The silent reception phone switchboard was lit up with flashing lights to his left on the large polished wood desk. The older man continued twitching with his own odd rictus held grin and then said, “Mario” in a surprisingly high voice. A thug stepped over with an envelope for Gin.

Gin took the envelope and weighed it in his hands. He slid a finger under the flap, and angled it to look inside. “That looks like it will do. Was today to your satisfaction?”

The man at the reception desk nodded purposefully, fighting the tremors to indicate his agreement. Gin said cheerily, “So the remaining participants? Will they also be treated to our satisfaction?”

The twitching gentleman ground out “Three year sentences.” Gin smiled and nodded, spinning his chair back and forth. “Very good. As we had hoped.” He turned to Matsumoto and Kira. “Izuru, bring both bags please. All have been accounted for.” Kira shot to his feet with his school bag and took the second heavy bag from Matsumoto. One bag thudded against his leg as he walked, was it guns? Tools? Too heavy and the wrong shape to be drugs or money.

Kira handed both bags to Mario, who hoisted them both with one huge hand and turned back to the man at the reception desk. The man waved a shaky hand at the bags, Mario slid the zipper on one and pulled out a katana tsuka, and then a dull black tanto saya. He showed the man in the reception chair. The wall of thugs all seemed to nod as one and the man, grimacing through a twitching grin once more, said echoing Gin but with his scratchy high voice, “Very good Ichimaru.”

Gin stood and bowed respectfully low to the man and then to the assembled thugs, holding the envelope in both hands in front of his chest. He turned and gestured to Matsumoto and Kira to follow him to the brass elevator. Kira wasn’t sure what had happened but he figured it was related to Mishima’s failed coup this morning. Was it only this morning? A thug melted off the group and followed them as they walked.

Matsumoto waved to the thug standing in the hall to the lobby and then slid her arm through Gin’s as they entered the elevator, “Gin you owe me dinner, this errand was incredibly boring. What about going to that place I heard about called Nana? I crave Obanzai-ryori today you know.” Gin spontaneously laughed. She batted her eyelashes at him as she held his arm tightly against her chest. She flipped her hair coquettishly with her other hand.

Kira stood facing the elevator doors, helplessly at sea in her conversation. Was every word she said laden with private jokes and innuendo? Gin just smiled cryptically as the elevator descended, seemingly staring at Kira in the reflective elevator panels. Kira worried that he would be forced to go to dinner and would spend the entire time in a blaze of embarrassment and humiliation.

The elevator doors mercifully opened before he had to hear more of the run down of Matsumoto’s recent love life that she was for some reason telling Gin as he smiled and nodded, eyes almost shut, words rolling off him.

As they left through the lobby, Gin turned to him “Kira, you may call the car and return to the dojo. You did well today. We will certainly do this again soon I’m sure. Many thanks for your assistance today. Please accept this as a partial thank you.” Gin bowed to him, a slight bow but still respectful. Gin handed him a handful of 10,000 yen notes from the envelope.

Kira immediately apologized and bowed low, face burning with shame for even thinking that he might be invited for the celebratory meal. Gin dismissed him with a smile outside the Meiji Seimei Kan, pointing out a telephone booth in a kiosk by Tokyo Station a few blocks down. Matsumoto gave him the driver’s card with both hands and only a bow of the head, which she ruined when she winked at him comically asking if he had coins for the phone. He averted his eyes and nodded his head.

As he fled, Kira heard Matsumoto complaining, “That bad habit you had of always disappearing without telling me where you are going, it still hasn't changed Gin.” He didn’t quite hear Gin’s answer but he heard him say softly what he guessed was her given name, Rangiku, as they walked off together in the opposite direction.

++++++

Kira sat in the sei retsu line in seiza. It had been a hard practice. The kendoka were exhausted. He was breathing hard and his gi was bunched and sweaty. His knees were aching. The knots on his hakima were biting into his hips.  He knew he had a large bruise on his throat from Gin's jarring tsuki he had been unable to block. His elbows and wrists were also aching from battering strikes.

As he sat for the mokuso he thought again about his effortless step into a world he knew so little about with Gin. His thoughts tangled and he sighed. An unfortunate misstep perhaps but nevertheless now he was committed.

Kira cracked open his eyes, staring at the sensei at the front of the dojo. Gin sat alone in his pristine white gi facing the students. Gin also meditated, his eyes seemingly closed, still grinning. His face pale as normal and not a hair out of place.

Kira was still lost in thought as Gin was starting his remarks to the dojo. Gin had taken special glee in sparring with him during mawari geiko today, keeping the bout going longer than normal and making Kira work for every movement. Although he had not fallen he had also not been able to score any strikes on Gin at all. When the crushing sparring had ended, he had only gotten a brief “Good work Izuru - as expected” before Gin turned away to engage the next student.

He tuned in again when he heard Gin say “A good friend of mine who I only recently lost, often said that the past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”

Kira sighed deeply thinking of only the near future. He waited patiently for dismissal so he could retrieve Gin’s bogu and then finally see to his bruised elbows and get his weight off his aching knees.

**Author's Note:**

> Most of Mishima’s direct dialogue is taken, paraphrased and rephrased, from 'Sun and Steel' (1970).


End file.
